iPad will be king of the tablets for "the next ten years"

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Android tablet makers, get your hankies at the ready; a new report from Charlie Wolf of tech analyst firm Needham predicts that Apple’s iPad will remain the dominant force in the tablet market for the next ten years.

“Future tablets are more likely to steal share from one another than from the iPad. The tablet market has been inundated with new models- the Xoom running on Android’s Honeycomb operating system, RIM’s PlayBook running on the company’s QNX operating system, HP’s TouchPad running on webOS, and many others All of them have been greeted with a yawn and lacklustre sales,” said Wolf to All Things D.

As a result, Wolf sees the iPad only losing 20% of its markey share in the coming years, with Android tablet models only canabising sales from one another, and other OS models like the PlayBook and Touchpad failing to make a meaningful impact across all future generations of the gear.

The key to Apple’s success according to Wolf? The App Store.

“In the case of tablets, the only thing that matters – that turns what’s otherwise a slab into a versatile device – are the apps,” he said.

“And the applications available on the tablets introduced this year number at best in the hundreds. In comparison, more than 100,000 applications are available on the iPad.”

Do you agree with Wolf’s predictions? We’re not so sure; after a slow start, Android is now flourishing on smartphones. While the reach of the Google OS itself may mean that no-one individual tablet will outsell the iPad, it’s increasingly likely that more tablets will ship running versions of Android than iOS based ones.